1862 in science
The year 1862 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
Astronomy
- January 31 – Alvan Graham Clark makes the first observation of Sirius B, a white dwarf star, through an eighteen-inch telescope at Northwestern University in Illinois.
Biology
- May 15 – Charles Darwin publishes [Fertilisation of Orchids|On the various contrivances by which British people|British and foreign Orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing].
- Henry Walter Bates publishes "Contributions to an insect fauna of the Amazon valley. Lepidoptera: Heliconidae" describing Batesian mimicry.
- George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker begin publication of based on the collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England.
- John Gwyn Jeffreys begins publication of British Conchology, or an account of the Mollusca which now inhabit the British Isles and the surrounding seas.
Chemistry
- Chemist and composer Alexander Borodin describes the first nucleophilic displacement of chlorine by fluorine in benzoyl chloride.
- Mineralogist Alexandre-Emile Béguyer de Chancourtois makes the first proposal to arrange the chemical elements in order of atomic weights, although this is largely ignored by chemists.
- Alexander Parkes exhibits Parkesine, one of the earliest synthetic polymers, at the International Exhibition in London. This discovery forms the foundation of the modern plastics industry.
Earth sciences
- Friedrich Albert Fallou publishes "Pedologie oder allgemeine und besondere Bodenkunde", founding soil science.
Medicine
- Maurice Raynaud describes the vasospastic syndrome named after him in his doctoral dissertation.
- Hermann Snellen publishes the Snellen chart for testing visual acuity.
Paleontology
- November 20 – Richard Owen first describes a fossilised bird, Archaeopteryx, to the Royal Society of London.
Technology
- July 8 – Theodore Timby is granted a United States patent for discharging guns in a revolving turret, using electricity.
- July 22 – Henry O. Peabody is granted a United States patent for the Peabody action for rifles.
- November 4 – Richard Jordan Gatling is granted a United States patent for the Gatling gun.
- Brown & Sharpe produce the first Universal Milling machine.
- David Kirkaldy publishes Results of an Experimental Inquiry into the Comparative Tensile Strength and other properties of various kinds of Wrought-Iron and Steel in Glasgow describing his pioneering work in tensile testing.
Awards
Births
- January 23 – David Hilbert, German mathematician
- February 14 – Agnes Pockels, German chemist
- March 14 – Vilhelm Bjerknes, Norwegian physicist and meteorologist
- May 27 – John Edward Campbell, Irish-born mathematician
- June 7 – Philipp Lenard, German physicist
- June 9 – Ernest William Moir, British civil engineer
- July 2 – William Henry Bragg, English winner of the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics
- August 2 – Paul Bujor, Romanian animal morphologist, politician and short story writer
- October 12 – Theodor Boveri, German geneticist
- October 19 – Auguste Lumière, French inventor, film pioneer
- November 23 - Ernest Guglielminetti, Swiss physician
- William Hoskins, American inventor
Deaths
- January 10 – Samuel Colt, American inventor
- February 3 – Jean-Baptiste Biot, French physicist
- February 7 – Prosper Ménière, French physician who first described the symptoms of Ménière's disease
- February 11 – Luther V. Bell, American psychiatric physician
- March 1 – Peter Barlow, English mathematician
- April 3 – Sir James Clark Ross, English explorer of the Polar regions
- May 6 – Olry Terquem, French Jewish geometer
- October 8 – James Walker, Scottish-born civil engineer
- October 21 – Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet, English physiologist
- December 18 – Lucas Barrett, English naturalist
- December 20 – Robert Knox, Scottish anatomist
- December 21 – Karl Kreil, Austrian astronomer